


With A Wolf By His Side

by Katherine



Category: A Companion to Wolves - Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette, The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Genre: Fusion, Gen, Psychic Wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 11:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Viviane remembered Uther's words years later when her son came at last to visit her in Avalon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With A Wolf By His Side

"I'll send the boy away," Uther agreed. "It's time enough for him to be introduced to some pups. He's forward for his age. And if a wolf chooses him—as my own brother tells me is likely—"

"Then Igraine need worry far less about his safety," Viviane concluded, thinking of Igraine pale beside the boy's sickbed. Tactfully, Viviane did not mention her certainty that Uther too was anxious for his son.

"Not such reason to, with a brother by his side," Uther said. He added, as if musing to himself, "A brother, I hope. I won't call the boy my heir yet, but the future may. It's easier for a king to have a brother than a sister all expect to be a queen-wolf to the pack."

There was a silence before he said, quietly, "There would have been less strife among us all had Ambrosius' sister not been as she was."

Although it was Viviane's work that had put Uther on the throne of High King after Ambrosius' death, he rarely talked to her beyond formalities when she visited Igraine. Less often still did he speak with Viviane about kingcraft.

 

Viviane remembered Uther's words years later when her son came at last to visit her in Avalon. Galahad was now bearing the name Lancelet and had a wolf by his side. She was troubled; she had not thought sending him to be fostered in the outer world would result in him making himself a place in one of the wolf-halls. What now of her plan that he return to stay in Avalon?

Rather than try further to convince him at the moment, she dismissed him with her fosterling Morgaine, as much to give herself time to think as to give the young people joy.

 

Relief from her duties as priestess for the day would have in itself made the day joyous to Morgaine. Added to this was that she was to spend the time in company with her foster-mother's son. She remembered him as a child when he had still lived in Avalon. He was now an elegant youth; and he had a wolf who shared his thoughts.

Morgaine paused partway up the hill, and turned to see how near Lancelet was behind her. She enjoyed seeing that he had some difficulty matching her speed, and indeed was breathing with a visible effort from the fast pace. He looked darkly handsome; his pale sister romping around him beautiful.

The sweetness of the time, then to lie together (in sleep, not the lying together that was a burn in her against her vows) on the grass of the high hill, feeling the power of the earth beneath them, the power of the Goddess in them both...

To go from these heights to trudging ahead, leading an ungrateful Gwenhyfar back through the mists, was near intolerable to Morgaine.

At least Gwenhyfar, though drawing Lancelet's eye with her prettiness, did not seem knowledgeable. Morgaine felt scorn as she heard the girl's question "What is her name?" No-one outside the wolf-halls—as all women were—should simply ask the name of a wolf, as if it were a dog or a human companion. Yet Lancelet only shook his head and started to speak gently of scent-names and generations-fixed traditions.

Drawing the icy confidence of a priestess around her, Morgaine walked further ahead. She set aside her thoughts of Lancelet, the feel of his arms, her barely-formed dreams of someday being allowed to touch his sister and learn her name. She focused only on the path ahead of her, where she would step to return Gwenhyfar to the outer world. Lancelet and his sister would return with her to Avalon, but she knew they also would soon leave. Just as she would never have a place in any wolf-hall, so they were not suited to seclusion in Avalon.


End file.
